The Dark Frontier

by A. B. Decker

  But Marthe only heard the thrill in Ellen’s words and smiled with her sparkling, sapphire-blue eyes.

  “Tonight is our last night before we head back home,” she said, “and I think we should dine in style this evening. So I’ve booked a table at Badrutt’s Palace.” There was an air of defiance in her voice that struck Ellen as odd. Was this a rebellion against her husband, she wondered, or against the ordered life Marthe’s sister led with her watchful accountant and neatly kept cash book.

  “But for now,” she added, let’s walk back up to the chalet before the sun goes down completely.”

  They were less than halfway back and the sun had already tucked itself firmly behind the mountains. The light was fading fast. They quickened their pace past the shops and luxury hotels and on up the hill to the lodge.

  “What’s that?” Ellen asked, pointing at a building on the other side of the road. They had walked this way every day since arriving here, but this was the first time the modest domed construction tucked away in the wooded slope above them had caught her attention.

  “It’s the Segantini Museum,” Marthe explained, then added in response to Ellen’s blank expression: “Segantini was an Austrian artist. Or Italian, whichever way you want to look at it. Born an Austrian in an Italian region. But the Swiss also like to think of him as one of theirs, because he lived so much of his life here, where he painted all his great work. But he remained stateless his entire life. A true citizen of nowhere, who spent much of his time crossing borders. A frontalier all his life. I wonder what the member of parliament behind you at lunch earlier in the week would have thought about Segantini if they had lived at the same time…

  “But it’s closed now,” Marthe added, raising her voice as Ellen wandered over to take a closer look.

  At the entrance to the museum stood an imposing marble sculpture. The beautiful naked form of a young woman with long flowing hair rose from a marble crag that was populated in relief by a group of sheep and lambs. Inscribed on the base of the sculpture were the words: La bellezza liberata dalla materia.

  “Why didn’t I notice this place before?” Ellen asked, turning to Marthe, who by now had caught up with her.

  “You were too preoccupied perhaps,” Marthe suggested.

  “It’s so beautiful.”

  “Beauty liberated from the material world,” Marthe said.

  Ellen gave her a mystified look.

  “That’s what the inscription means. It was originally made for his tomb. I have no idea why it ended up here. He’s actually buried in a village not far away called Maloja, close to the Italian border.”

  Ellen was transfixed. In that moment, the sentiment carved into the marble appeared to encapsulate exactly the feelings that imbued every sinew of her soul.

  “Come on Ellen.” Marthe tugged at her arm. “It will be getting dark very soon, and we need to change for dinner.”

  The jerking motion of Marthe’s hand brought Ellen back from her dreamy captivation.

  “Not far from here, high up on the mountaintop, is the hut where Segantini lived and painted,” Marthe added. “It’s still standing after all these years. When you come back in the summer, we’ll take a walk up there. As you put it earlier, it’s another world.”

  ‘When I come back,’ Ellen repeated quietly to herself, sensing a tingle of anticipation at the idea. “But it’s not my world, is it?” she said.

  Her words were tinged with sadness.

  “I mean, I’m sure it’s beautiful in the summer as well. But will I have found Frank by then? Will my world have returned to the way it was until a few weeks ago?”

  Marthe placed a comforting hand on Ellen’s left arm. But had no answers for her.

  For the rest of the evening, Ellen continued to turn these questions over in her mind. Even the haute cuisine at Badrutt’s Palace, which Marthe had hoped would mark the perfect end to their stay, failed to put these questions to rest.

  “I recommend the Capuns,” Marthe said. “They’re a local speciality, and I’m told they do it perfectly here.”

  Ellen could not say whether it was the troubling uncertainties on her mind or the spaetzli dough wrapped in Swiss chard leaves that wreaked havoc with her digestion. But whatever the cause, she was left feeling uncomfortably bloated.

  “Try this,” Marthe said, when the waitress placed two small glasses on the table. They contained a concoction that looked as toxic as a solution of Congo red salvaged from some long defunct chemical laboratory. “We call it Röteli. It’s good for the digestion.”

  Ellen looked askance at the glass in front of her. She was unconvinced. Only when Marthe picked up her glass and downed the contents in one was she reassured that at least it was probably not poisonous. Gingerly she followed Marthe’s example and downed the potion. The sweet medicinal flavour may have lent credence to the claims of digestive relief. But it brought an expression of disgust to Ellen’s face. And in fact did nothing for her indigestion.

  Yet she managed a smile through her discomfort as she recalled the digestive woes inflicted on her by Frank’s culinary skills.

  “You see,” said Marthe, “I told you it was good for the digestion.”

  “It’s not that,” Ellen explained. “I was just thinking of the meals Frank sometimes cooks for me. He comes from Lancashire, where he grew up on things like tripe and vinegar, so I suppose it shouldn’t have come as any surprise the first time he tried one of his own specialities on me.”

  The smile morphed into a wince at the memory of the time Frank had spoken of a trip to Hamburg, where he had discovered their local speciality Labskaus. What probably excited him more than anything, she explained, was the similarity in name to the lamb scouse his mother used to cook for him. But what he tasted in Hamburg was quite different, he said. And he insisted on making it for her one evening. Ellen could not understand how he could even contemplate eating it. The mash of corned beef and beetroot with a side of herring not only looked awful and tasted terrible, but smelled even worse.

  “… but then he always did have a strange sense of smell,” she added, recalling that this was something he always put down to the slightly misshapen bridge of his nose.

  “Do you think that’s possible?” Ellen asked, as they left the restaurant and wandered back up the hill arm in arm through the snow.

  “I’m sure it is,” Marthe assured her.

  Ellen mulled over these memories and uncertainties all the way back to the chalet. And contemplated the evening which Marthe had intended to be so perfect yet ended in digestive disgruntlement.

  But perfection of another kind came eventually once they closed the door on the cold night air. After they had both turned in and Ellen had settled down under the cosy warmth of her duvet, she heard the gentle squeak of her door opening. It was Marthe. Not a word was said. Ellen felt her pulse quicken and sensed a tingle as Marthe slid in under the duvet and put an arm around her. They remained in each other’s embrace for the remainder of their last night in the mountains. And Ellen carried the memory of that night with her all the way back on the train the next day.

  After their return, Urs Zellweger appeared unsurprised when Marthe told him of Ellen’s decision to return home. He received this news with the kind of clinical psychiatrist’s response that Ellen had come to expect from him.

  “A wise decision under the circumstances,” was the way he framed it. All trace of Frank, he conceded, seemed to have dried up. And it was probably best if she returned to her normal routine at home in London while the search continues. They would of course contact her as soon as they had any news.

  Ellen had the impression Dr Zellweger would be quite pleased to see the back of her. It would be understandable, she told herself. But it did make her wonder whether he suspected his wife had struck up a relationship with their house guest that was just too intimate for his comfort. She coloured at the thought. When Marthe promptly jumped in with the suggestion that they go to the station the next day to check on
departure times and get a ticket, Ellen sensed that she had noticed her blushes. And this made her colour up all the more.

  “That’s a good idea, Marthe,” Dr Zellweger said, glancing at Ellen with a smile. “And you can be sure we will contact you as soon as we have any news,” he repeated, setting Ellen’s mind at rest that he had given no thought to the colour in her cheeks.

  It was not that he was actively encouraging her to return. Nor did Ellen have any doubt that, as a psychiatrist, he would have understood what a wrench it was for her to leave behind the last known links with Frank, however tenuous. But she was very much aware of how wedded he was to his psychiatric hospital. Yet some weeks had now passed since the man who was said to be Frank absconded from the clinic. And in the meantime, this stranger appeared to have become more a person of interest to the police than a patient of Dr Zellweger’s.

  Ellen sensed the blushes fade with these thoughts, and she became outwardly more composed. But inwardly she was beginning to wonder how the return to her normal routine would shape up. Whether it would even be possible to revisit life back in London as it had been until a few weeks ago. Simply to carry on as normal. Constantly awaiting a call from Marthe or Dr Zellweger. Or from the police.

  Chapter 25

  Countless months in Italian custody had left their mark on Frank. After his arrest in possession of a firearm by the Como police, he was interrogated for weeks by the local Carabinieri, who suspected him of antifascist motives for entering Italy. When they concluded he must be an agitator for the Justice and Liberty movement, he was transferred to Milan for more aggressive questioning. For his entire incarceration he was kept in solitary confinement. The only thing that kept him going was the memory of Patricia and his determination to get back to her as soon as he could. He recalled the very first time he laid eyes on her, when she captivated him with the fullness of her raven hair. The indescribable beauty of the moment when she threw her head back, letting her hair catch in the corner of her mouth. And the way she would discreetly part her lips to sweep away the black strands with her fingers. Or the beguiling motion of her ankles when he followed their effortless progress up the steps and watched the seam of her stockings as they traced every movement. But these sweet memories remained forever in the shadow of the bitter knowledge that she had no idea where he was or what had happened to him. That maybe she even thought his failure to return was his way of dumping her.

  He had no idea just how many months passed before he was eventually allowed to pass on a message to the office of his father’s old lawyer. Burow himself was now retired, but if he could persuade a lawyer’s office in the country of Italy’s closest ally to vouch for him, he felt that he might stand a chance of getting out of the hole he was in. Whether it was this that did it, he had no idea. But one day, out of the blue, they began to treat him with a little respect. And as the interrogations became less frequent and less intense, he sensed that his case was being handled more seriously.

  So it was that, in due course, he was charged with nothing more than unlawful possession of a firearm. Just a few weeks later, he was deemed to have served a sufficient sentence for this crime and was quietly released.

  When he finally got to taste fresh air again, Frank was shocked to find it was mid-winter. He must have been in detention for the best part of a year. And all that time there had been no contact with the outside world. They had refused him permission to contact anyone except immediate family. But he saw little point in contacting his mother, since she would probably not even know him.

  And, as Frank had remained entirely cut off from Patricia, the vast gaping hole that now defined whatever there had been between them totally consumed his every waking hour. He was desperate to know how she was and what had become of her after he failed to get back over the Maloja Pass as planned. So, on his release from prison, he wasted no time finding a tram to the station.

  His prolonged incarceration had made him acutely aware of how time had left him behind. So much had passed him by. On the tram, he was struck by shop facades now sprayed with the words ‘Negozio Giudeo’ under the Star of David in evil imitation of his own country. It was something he had never seen in Italy before. On a more cheerful note, some of the newspapers on the newsstands at Milan’s sparkling new triumphalist central station were full of pride in the national football team’s bid to retain the World Cup in Paris during the summer. But his acute awareness of time past was brought home to him above all when he bought a newspaper to read on his journey north.

  The headline that caught his eye was the news that Ribbentrop had just been appointed to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Germany. How much deeper into its swamp of incompetence can this country stoop, Frank asked himself, when it appoints a dull salesman of cheap, sparkling wine to represent it abroad? But if nothing else, the news made him thankful that his own case was now closed and hence no longer a foreign affair.

  Other than this, the newspaper offered little newsworthy content, and after crossing that fateful border at Como, he soon fell into a deep sleep.

  It was an early March morning in 1938 when the train pulled into the central station at Basel. The square outside the station bristled with too much activity for so early on a Monday. Frank sensed a buzz of excitement in the air. Even the trams were running. It was as if the whole city had come out to celebrate his arrival home. The return of the hero who had rid the streets of the Third Reich’s ambassador for thuggery in Basel. For the first time in this city, he felt the world was on his side, and he leapt onto the first tram that came along with a heart which was lighter and more carefree than he remembered it having been for a very long time – until he tried to find a seat amid the swarm of excited faces that crammed into the carriage more tightly with every stop as it headed into the city. Why so early in the morning? Frank asked himself. Where were they going?

  As the heat and noise in the tram rose, memories of his last night in this city impinged on every direction his mind tried to take in an effort to shake off the images of Breitner bleeding onto Patricia’s file. A whole year had passed. Yet it seemed like only yesterday when he fled the scene of reckoning, with Breitner’s youth sports thugs in hot pursuit. He pictured the whole place on high alert when the killing was discovered. Imagined it could well have led to a local diplomatic crisis while he was incarcerated in Italy – in the same way the killing of Gustloff did in Davos. And today, the moment he stepped off the train, he felt the eyes of the city were on him.

  When Frank was released from his Italian prison, he was surprised to have the two pages from Patricia’s file returned to him by his jailers, complete with photographs. They kept the gun, of course. But he had expected them to hold on to Breitner’s file contents as well. Now, finally back in the place where he had come under her spell, he was tempted to take the pages out and pore over the contents before their reunion. But he felt deterred by the people crowded around him on the tram. The cause of his hesitation lay deeper than mere inhibition. It lay right down in the fragile new roots of his existence – roots that were struggling to establish themselves in the rocky soil of an entangled past which seemed already close to withering. He knew the contents of the file would lend a definition to this past which reason told him would be best left in darkness. It served no one’s interest. Certainly not his, nor Patricia’s, nor her father’s. As he was contemplating where the pages with their photograph of Patricia’s father might be safely and permanently disposed of, his thoughts were interrupted by a disembodied voice:

  “Endstation.”

  The tram was already grinding to a halt. It was the end of the line. But he could see that they had not even reached the city centre. Like a lost sheep, he followed the crowds that poured out onto the pavement. And it dawned on him as they streamed onto the street that the city’s three days of Fasnacht were just getting under way. He recalled from the last time he was here that the carnival started at four on a Monday morning with drums, pipes and an endless parade of va
st painted lanterns. The dense thronging crowds and droves of people on the streets came to him as a godsend. Gave him the cover of anonymity he needed on his journey through the city. And he let them lead him wherever they were headed – a murderer in their midst, however heroic he thought himself to be.

  When he came to the bridge over the Rhine, he slipped away down the steps to the river where he had been accosted by Silverstone and the cloth cap. It occurred to him that there could be no better guardian of Patricia’s secrets than these swirling waters. He hunted around on the promenade for a stone that would take the pages and anchor them firmly to the river bed. Finding one of suitable size, he then wrapped the pages around the stone and threw it as far out into the river as he could. As it sank from view some thirty metres out, Frank knew that he would never be confronted any longer with the truths in Breitner’s file. He felt the last burden slip gently from his shoulders.

  The relief proved premature. When he looked up, the crowds were still flocking above him towards their mysterious goal. They reminded him of lemmings, and he wondered whether it was wise to follow them. But what unsettled him in particular was the sight of a solitary figure standing out above them all. It was not only the fedora or the way he was moving more slowly, out of step with the rest, that caught Frank’s eye, as the familiar figure stopped now and then searching the crowd around him. Silverstone would catch his attention under any circumstances.

  ‘Is it me he’s looking for?’ Frank asked himself. ‘Has he seen me?’

  He even wondered whether Silverstone might have also been at Breitner’s door on the night of the killing. Everything had happened too quickly to get a clear picture of how many there had been.

  Silverstone’s role in the events that had so irrevocably shaped Frank’s life before he was thrown into prison remained as impenetrable as ever. But one thing was clear to him: whenever the American crossed his path, he seemed to be waving a flag of huge yet baffling significance in his face. This cold and absurdly early winter morning was no exception. Feeling safer with him in his sights, however, Frank hurried back up the steps and re-joined the flocking crowds on their flight across the bridge.